


Guts and Glory

by wearemany



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2013-2014 NHL Season, Barebacking, Los Angeles Kings, M/M, Open Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 22:02:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time, they can’t get ten minutes alone for trying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guts and Glory

**Author's Note:**

> You could read this as part of the [Rookies ‘verse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/62736), and eventually I’ll probably add it over there, but for now I’m just posting as a standalone.

_don’t take love off the table yet_

__  
  


Jeff doesn’t remember much about last time.

Winning was the most unlikely, most inevitable thing he’d ever dreamed of doing, and Mike was everywhere.

A haze of champagne and beer and coke and anything else Mike put in his hand or on his tongue and said, “Here.” Daytime pool parties fading into nightclub bathrooms and back into sunrises that lit up messy beds in over-air conditioned hotel rooms. They never remembered to close the curtains.

Mike’s hands in his hair, Mike’s cock pressed wet against his cheek as someone behind him said, “Oh shit, sorry,” and slammed the door shut again.

Another room, maybe another city, and he was fucking Mike up against a couch when Williams walked in, held Jeff’s stare a long moment like he might not leave at all before finally shaking his head and saying, softly, “Fuck, you guys,” and turning back around.

Stolly caught them lazily making out in the back of a dark SUV between parades and just sighed, climbed in the front seat and ignored them entirely.

By the time they started to sober up for more than a few hours at a time, it seemed like basically everyone knew. Nobody cared or seemed especially surprised. They’d won. They were team.

This time, they can’t get ten minutes alone for trying.

Winning is a relief, a cool compress after the hot anxiety of two months on the brink of elimination. They get drunk, sometimes stoned, but very rarely wild. Late-night bar crawls along the beach. Girlfriends. Brunch at the house. Back to the beach. Everyone’s an old friend, or feels like it, and it’s all a comfortable, uncomplicated triumph after such a long, hard grind.

But there’s always someone around.   

Jeff gets impatient and cranky without recognizing why, until he looks across one more room full of people between him and Mike and catches Mike’s dissatisfied scowl staring back at him.

Once he can see it, name the frustration, it’s twice as bad. The pride of proving their first Cup was no lucky break is getting buried beneath every opportunity they’ve missed to properly and appropriately celebrate exactly how they got here—together.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Mike suggests, grabbing his arm as they head out of the restaurant, as if they’ve been talking about it this whole time. Jeff nods, too eager maybe but he doesn’t give a shit. Every day a few more folks go back home to the real world. Tomorrow might be less crazy.

Maybe. It’s not even dark yet and with this fiery pull under his skin where Mike’s not even touching him any more, tomorrow feels a million years away.

Things are changing, things are going to change, and no one would say Jeff is a guy who handles change well. Jeff’s just left standing there, everyone walking ahead, Lindsey and Megan arm in arm, heads tilted close in their own conversation.

He jogs a couple meters to catch up, pulls Mike away. “You hang on to that extra hotel room?” They did a better job this run of getting everybody’s family squared away but there were a few leftover reservations to go around, and Jeff vaguely recalls Mike ending up with a surplus.

But Mike shakes him off. “It’s downtown,” he says, and they might be able to duck out for an hour or two but not just to fight traffic there and back. Jeff tries not to stomp his foot like a frustrated little kid, even if that’s how he feels.

“Whoa, boys,” Stolly says on their heels, nudging them forward. “Don’t block the road.”  

Mike elbows Jeff and they let him ahead, then nearly return the favor, running into Stolly’s back as he skips a step.

He bumps back in between them, slides an arm around each of their waists.

“My place is empty,” Stolly says, totally casual.

Mike huffs out a happy, surprised laugh. Jeff has to pay attention so he doesn’t fall off the curb with how they’re walking three abreast.

Stolly squeezes Jeff’s hip, helps Jeff keep his balance. “You look ready to murder somebody, both of you,” he says. “Go on, it’s two blocks from here. I’ll cover for you.”  

He slips away, back to the group, and Mike pulls out his phone. They’re still a little bit behind from everybody.

“What are you doing,” Jeff says, and Mike shoulders him down the cross-street, away from the water.

“I told Linds to tell Meg we’d be back later,” Mike says.

Both their phones buzz, Stolly sending his alarm code and the lockbox combination to get the key.

Megan texts right after: _have fun :)_

Mike looks up with a fast grin. “Okay?”

Jeff says, “Finally,” and breaks into a run, summer air warm like a hair dryer on his face. He beats Mike to Stolly’s gate by a good thirty seconds and has the door unlocked while Mike’s still breathing hard.

“Wait,” Mike says, low, as they come into the foyer. “Anybody here?” he calls.

There’s no answer. Jeff kicks off his flip flops. “Oh, now you care who walks in?”

“Yeah,” Mike says. Easy, like nothing’s been all spring. “Right now is just us.”

Jeff has a dim memory of Stolly’s guest room from a late August day when he drank too much at brunch and wandered back and passed out for a few hours. It’s down the hall, which smells lightly like Erin’s flowery perfume, past framed black and white portraits of her and Stolly looking like the world’s most perfect couple. Nothing like some formulaic fancy hotel, and Jeff is glad for it. This isn’t a way to escape. It’s just their way.

Mike tackles him from behind and the bed makes a horrifying squeak as they both land with their full weight across it. Mike wrangles them around until Jeff is on his back, spreadeagle, shirt stuck for a minute around his chin until they can work it over his head.

They haven’t done this since the night they closed out the San Jose series, and that was more of a team bonding exercise than it was about them. It was fun but it doesn’t compare with how desperate and determined Mike gets when they’re alone. In a mood like this the only thing that really slows Mike down is getting fucked.

He leaves Jeff mostly naked on the bed, stripping his own clothes off as he rummages through the nightstands and then drawers in the guest bathroom, muttering to himself as the search clearly comes up empty. They could go look in Jarret and Erin’s room for actual lube, but they’re not total assholes with no respect for a teammate’s privacy. Probably.

Mike comes back with a bottle of lotion. “I’m game if you are,” he says, among the most half-assed dares Jeff’s ever heard out of Mike’s mouth.

“No guts, no glory,” Jeff says, and Mike laughs low in his chest as he straddles Jeff’s hips and bends forward for a rough, wet kiss.

They make out like that for a while, Mike heavy on Jeff’s thighs, his tongue hot in Jeff’s mouth, and Jeff enjoys the lazy pace because he knows it won’t last, can sense the minute before Mike pulls back and hands him the lotion.

“You sure?” he asks, just checking, and Mike stares back like Jeff’s lost his damn mind. Megan’s got Jeff pretty well-trained to use his words, in and out of bed, but he and Mike have never made much of an effort in that area. Never really needed to most of the time.

Mike opens the bottle, squeezing lotion into Jeff’s palm. “If I was any more obvious about it,” Mike says, shaking his head and biting his way up Jeff’s throat.

Jeff closes his hand, getting his fingers slick, and reaches around to push one in. Mike mumbles incoherently into Jeff’s neck, squeezing his knees together around Jeff’s waist and lifting up just enough that Jeff can fuck into him at a better angle. The lotion is greasier than lube and smells familiar in a distant way Jeff can’t quite identify.

Mike groans against Jeff’s jaw, pushing his ass back hard as Jeff works in another finger, and after a minute shoves Jeff’s hand away altogether.

“I’m sure,” he says, almost mocking, and sits himself down on Jeff’s cock so hard that Jeff gets that dizzy, speedy feeling that makes him want to promise Mike no matter how fast this first round goes they won’t stop, that they’ll go again and again all night until they’re both too fucked out to move. They don’t have that kind of time today but he still has to bite back the words.

He lets Mike run the fuck as fast and brutal as he wants, because that’s how it always goes when it’s like this, and what Jeff needs right now is something that he knows hasn’t changed, won’t change, like the way Mike whimpers as he fucks himself on Jeff’s cock. Mike’s so focused and fearless, so sure this is a race he’ll always win.

One of their unspoken rules is that Jeff is allowed to trail his hands up and down Mike’s sides, to tweak his nipples or squeeze his ass, to stroke the length of Mike’s thigh muscles as they flex and relax—but Mike will slap Jeff’s hands away if they come near Mike’s dick. It’s only when Mike’s pretty far gone, balancing himself on Jeff’s chest with one hand and his hip with the other as he gets close, that he’ll let Jeff jerk him off.

Jeff’s hand is still slippery with lotion as he twists his wrist around the head of Mike’s cock, and the familiar smell finally clicks in his subconscious. It’s the same brand Mike packed on road trips, way back when they were first on the Flyers, long before they figured any of this shit out.

Mike would always jerk off in the hotel while Jeff was in the shower, routine and unapologetic. As Mike would pass Jeff to take his turn in the bathroom, the thick steam would swirl with the scent of Mike’s sweat and spunk and that exact same lotion. More often than not Jeff would have to sit down on the end of his bed, needing to catch his breath a little before he went about the rest of getting ready.

That smell makes him realize suddenly how close he is, too, which he tends to lose sight of while Mike’s riding him. He can feel the slickness as he pulses inside Mike, and Mike clenches down around him, coming over Jeff’s hand and across their stomachs. Mike groans, low and satisfied, and slumps forward, his head resting on Jeff’s collarbone.

“Nothing else,” he mutters into Jeff’s chest, then swallows wetly.

Jeff knows exactly what he means. Nothing else feels like this. Nothing else matters when they’re like this. Nothing else in their lives is this easy, or this complicated, or this necessary. Not even winning, and that’s what they’re built for. He curls his arms around Mike’s back, holding him hard and close.

Eventually Mike grunts, lifting himself off. Jeff sinks deeper into the bed, closing his eyes for a minute and listening to Mike run water in the bathroom. The mattress dips as Mike curls up along Jeff’s side.

“Remember when—” Mike murmurs, and Jeff nods, chin bumping Mike’s shoulder. Mike smothers a smile into Jeff’s arm. “You don’t even know what I was saying.”

“I always know,” Jeff says, and Mike hums, a grudging concession that either Jeff’s right or it doesn’t matter enough to argue the point. Mike’s the one who worries over every little thing, and Jeff’s used to reminding him how they got this far.

Jeff presses his thumb into Mike’s waist, the sharp edge of his playoffs-skinny hip warm under Jeff’s palm.

“Mike,” he says, and it sounds too serious in their lazy afternoon cocoon, but Jeff is desperate now to say this, to be clear about it. It feels as urgent as it had been to get Mike alone and naked an hour before.

He says Mike’s name again and Mike lifts his head, says, “I know.”

“You have to—” Jeff opens his hand wide across the base of Mike’s spine. “When you talk to Dean again, you really have to—”

Mike says, shorter this time, “I know.”

And it’s not that Jeff thinks Mike won’t make his case, won’t try with every bone in his body that knows how to win to convince Lombardi why he should stay in Los Angeles.

He’s just not sure Mike understands how much Jeff needs him to stay. Before Columbus, maybe Jeff would’ve said if at some point they went their separate ways, they’d be fine. They’re professionals. That’s the business. They’d still talk. See each other when they could. Live their lives.

But it was awful, and he can’t pretend otherwise. They don’t need each other the way they did when they were 20, or even 25, but they aren’t anywhere near done.

“I’ll do it,” Mike says, sincere and determined. “We won. That’s what he was waiting for, I think, and I know what he needs me to say. He needs to know I’m not done.”

Jeff exhales. Mike pushes himself up on one elbow.

“We’re not done,” Mike says. “I know you always freak out over shit changing, but this is still the good part.”

Jeff stretches out his neck, kisses Mike on the mouth, turning on his side so they’re pressed against each other chest to chest. “I like when you’re the calm one,” he says, and Mike rolls his eyes.

“You get the ring yet?” Mike asks, lifting Jeff’s left hand and nipping at his fingertips. One afternoon in Chicago when they’d been desperate to stop thinking about the conference finals, Mike had ushered him into a jewelry store with similar impatience. “I’m not going to let my best friend half-ass his own proposal,” he said.

“Not yet,” Jeff says, ducking his head to suck a kiss on the inside of Mike’s wrist.

It’s not weird, the way they all know about each other, but sometimes it’s weird to Jeff that it’s not weird. It’s weird how Mike thinks this is a good time to talk about Jeff getting engaged.

“We don’t have to—not right now, when it’s just us,” he says.

Mike levels a calm, challenging stare at him. “She gets it, right?”

Jeff nods.

“Jesus,” Mike says, laughing and pushing their hips together, “just marry her already then. Have you figured out how to do it?”

Jeff’s been a little busy lately, but he’s basically hoping he won’t have to do much more than pull out the ring. Once he buys it. Maybe they should get that taken care of before they meet back up with everyone again.

He shrugs, and Mike says, “As long as you’re not planning to just hold out the ring and stand there all silent and sulky until she says yes.” Mike jabs him in the ribs. “I know you,” he says, a minor threat, a reminder, a promise, and Jeff shoves back with an elbow in Mike’s stomach until they’re wrestling lazily, rolling back and forth across the bed, getting a little sweaty again.

Mike cups Jeff’s cock where it’s half-hard against Mike’s thigh. “I don’t think we really have time right now,” he says.

“I know,” Jeff says. “We will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title by Fall Out Boy, “Death Valley,” but almost everything I wrote about those two was because of “Where Did the Party Go.” I started this a year ago and it got pretty stuck - until Stoll got himself arrested, which somehow got me unstuck. Thanks bud?


End file.
